A Knock at the Door
by A plus
Summary: Hermione disappears for two years and the shows up on Harry's doorstep one night dying, and with a child. It was a mother's last request. She knew him too well. HGSS, HPGW.
1. Chapter 1

Harry was asleep, well, almost asleep, when there came an incessant knocking on his door. He ignored it at first, thinking maybe it was part of a dream, but it persisted. Putting on his glasses, he stumbled down the steps of his small flat.

He pulled open the door and a sopping wet woman collapsed into his arms. She was holding something large wrapped in a blanket. He grabbed her to keep her from falling, pulling her into the house and out of the rain. He pushed back her hood and stared into those eyes which were once so familiar but that he hadn't seen in nearly two years.

"Hermione," he whispered.

She had attended all the victory celebrations after the final battle and then disappeared. No one had seen her, no one had heard from her. The deaths of her parents had hit her hard. Ron's death had come soon after. Some people said she had snapped her wand and gone to live as a muggle. Others said she lived as a ghost, traveling from library to library. There had been a lot of speculation, but no facts. Now she was here, in his living room. She could barely stand, so he led her to the couch which she collapsed onto. The lump of blankets she was holding fell back a little, revealing a small child. He looked up at her with a raised eyebrow and she looked away. After a few minutes she looked at him again.

"Harry, I'm dying."

"I'll floo St. Mungo's, we'll get a healer and.."

"No," she interrupted him, "I've already tried. There's nothing more they can do. It's a curse from the war that has been dormant for years, something triggered it. It's irreversible. I don't have much time left."

His eye wandered to the sleeping child in her arms.

"So that was why you left?"

She nodded.

"And why I came back."

"I don't understand."

"I need you to take him, Harry."

He shook his head.

"What about the father?"

She looked down at the child and brushed some of his dark hair out of his face.

"Dead. He was dead before I even got a chance to tell him."

She suddenly looked up at Harry sharply.

"He's going to be an orphan."

Harry closed his eyes. Damn her. It wasn't fair. She knew his weaknesses. She knew just how to get to him.

"Hermione," he pleaded, "I'm a twenty-year-old male. I know absolutely nothing about raising a child."

"You'll figure it out."

"There has to be someone else."

"There's no one else. Don't you understand?" he could hear the panic in her voice, "Dumbledore will come for him, will put him where he thinks is best. Probably with some of my stupid muggle relatives who will think he's a freak. You of all people should know the consequences of Dumbledore's decisions." She placed the child down on the couch next to her.

"His name is Justin."

"Who's the father, Hermione? And don't tell me Ron with hair like that."

"It's better if you don't know."

"Were you…umm.." She had been a prisoner of the death eaters for a short time, after all.

She glared at him.

"No, I was not raped if that's what you're trying to ask. I assure you it was fully consensual. Ill-advised, perhaps, but none-the-less consensual."

She was suddenly seized by a coughing attack and Harry watched in horror and she choked up blood onto his floor.

"Sorry," she whispered, and attempted a spell to vanish it, but her magic was too weak.

The coughing continued. Her magic flashed and then flickered. Harry did what he could for her, but she was dead by morning.

x

x

Ginny returned at dawn from her night shift as an auror to find her boyfriend on the couch holding his friend's lifeless body. He didn't seem to notice her come in.

"Harry," she whispered, taking in the scene was horror.

"Harry," she repeated louder. He looked up this time, a haunted look in his eyes.

"She's dead. Ginny, she's dead."

She wasn't sure how long her boyfriend had been sitting there holding the dead woman in his arms. The baby on the couch next to him cried. Harry stared at it with a look of terror on his face.

"What do I do?" he whispered.

She carefully helped him up, gently placing the body on the couch and leading him into the kitchen. She made him some tea and flooed St. Mungo's to get someone to come take the body away. She made a quick trip to her mother's to grab some baby supplies.

After the baby had been put to sleep and the body had been removed from the house, she entered the kitchen to find Harry still seated at the table, staring absently at the wall.

"The baby?" she asked.

"I told her I'd raise him."

Ginny nodded and bit her lip to fight back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes.

"Harry, I'll stay through the end of the week, help you get set up with the baby and everything. But then I'm leaving."

He slowly turned his head to look at her, an expression of incomprehension on his face.

"Ginny, you're leaving me?"

"Don't play dumb with me Harry. Hermione Granger disappears for two years and then shows up and leaves you her child before dying."

"And?" He asked, still not understanding what this had to do with anything.

"Her dark-haired child."

"Ginny, I'm not the father."

"Then who is?"

"I don't know, but we never slept together."

"Don't lie to me, Harry."

"Ginny, there are a lot of dark-haired men."

"Really? How many of them were close with Hermione about two years ago?"

He had nothing to say to that. The two of them had spent almost every waking moment together, it was even hard for him to believe that she would have found the time to... that she could have hidden it from him...

"Harry, I'm sorry, I really am sorry about leaving you like this, with a child to take care of all alone, but I really can't do this. You have no idea how much you hurt me. I can't stay here and help you care for a child that is the result of an affair you had, especially when you won't even be honest with me about it."

x

x

Ginny was gone by the end of the week. The day after she left, there was a hard, determined knock at the door. Harry answered it to find the elderly wizard who had once been his mentor standing on the other side.

"Harry, it's good to see you."

"It's good to see you too, sir," Harry replied politely even as his hand tightened around the doorknob. He did not invite the man inside.

"I'm very sorry to hear about Miss Granger, I know you two were very close," the old man replied, eyes flickering past Harry to the interior of the apartment.

"She was my best friend."

"Yes. I'm here because I believe she left something in your care."

"She did, although I fail to see how it's any business of yours." He knew why Dumbledore was here. He had been expecting him.

"My dear boy," Dumbledore said in his patronizing tone, "the child needs to be with family. Miss Granger had a cousin who…"

"No," Harry interrupted, "the child stays with me."

Dumbledore's expression hardened and he drew his wand. Harry mirrored his motion.

"Don't think that you can intimidate me, sir. I've taken down wizards far more powerful than you." Harry's heart raced as the words came out of his mouth. Dumbledore was not a wizard you threatened. But still, Harry stood there with his wand drawn, standing up to the man as he wished someone had stood up to him when his own mother had died.

"This isn't over, Mr. Potter. I will have that child," he said coldly, turning away. Harry watched as the man apparated. It wasn't safe here anymore, if he wanted to keep the child, they would have to disappear. He packed up everything he needed and disapparated with the child in search of a house in the muggle world where they would not be found.

Harry stared at the sleeping body in the crib. What did one orphan know about raising another orphan? He hadn't exactly had the best role models at parenting. He wasn't going to lock this child under the stairs, but he wasn't exactly sure what his other options were. What could a man who had never had a family know about trying to create one out of nothing?


	2. Chapter 2

Harry stared at the eleven-year old boy and saw what he should have seen years ago. He _had_ seen it, he had just denied it for so long. He watched the tall, thin boy with unruly dark hair as he chopped vegetables. He watched the boy's fingers, his long fingers. The child was smart. He was Hermione's son, that had never been in question. Harry had tried to teach him quittich, but he preferred to spend most of his time reading. It wasn't until he had started becoming a teenager that Harry had been unable to deny it any longer. It was that first time that Harry had irritated him and the boy had scowled at him that Harry had frozen in fear for a second. This look, this scowl, was one that he knew intimately. He had been on the receiving end of it one too many times from his late potions master.

He was aware of the irony of raising the child of a man who he hated, a man who had hated him. This man had hated him because of who his father was. Harry could have easily done the same. Fortunately for the boy, Harry was a better man than that.

Harry was shaken out of his thoughts by a knock at the door. His wards faintly tingled, letting him know that the person on the other side was not a muggle.

"Justin, go to your room," he said quietly. The boy looked curious but obeyed. Harry drew his wand and opened the door. On the other side was a face he had not seen in many years, but not the one he had expected to see.

"Hello Professor McGonagall," he said coldly, "I assume the Headmaster sent you."

"I _am_ the Headmistress, Harry, Dumbledore is dead."

He lowered his wand.

"We all know what he was trying to do, Harry. I wanted to let you know that you don't have to hide anymore. No one will try to take Justin away from you."

He opened the door wider and motioned for her to step inside.

"Thank you for coming. Thank you for letting me know."

"He's of age to start Hogwarts this year. If you wish to educate him yourself, I understand, but I just wanted to let you know that there's always a place for him at Hogwarts."

Harry's gaze fell to the stack of books in the corner that the boy had already gone through that month.

"I'm afraid that my library and my teaching won't be able to sustain him for much longer. I'm sure he would love to attend Hogwarts."

"And we would love to have him."

Hermione had been her favorite student, but had died much too young. She had never been able to achieve the dreams Minerva had for her. She had high hopes for the girl's offspring.

"How is Hogwarts doing?"

"Very well. You should come visit sometime. We hired a new defense teacher, in fact. We convinced her to quit her job as an auror and start teaching." Harry didn't even need to ask who it was.

She turned to leave.

"I guess I'll be seeing him in September."

x

x

Ginerva Weasley scanned the list of names in her first class of the day. One caught her eye. The man who broke her heart had disappeared with the child almost ten years ago. She had not seen him since. It was just her luck, really. She had come here to teach, to start over, and still her past followed her. She would have to look every day into the face of the child of the man she loved and another woman. She collected herself and looked up at her classroom full of first years who were staring at her, waiting for her to begin. She stood from her desk and walked over to the board.

"I am Professor Weasely," she started, even though the students all knew who she was already. She had a famous brother who had died, after all. It was even rumored that she had once dated Harry Potter. "I will be your defense teacher this year. I have been an auror for over a decade, so I will be teaching you the practical aspects of defense as well as the theoretical ones."

She could do this, it wouldn't be so bad.

"Can anyone name a few basic types of defense spells?"

A hand shot up and her stomach sank as her eyes traveled down the hand to the dark-haired boy who owned it.

"Of course. Let me guess. You must be Mr. Granger."

"Yes, Ma'am. Stunners and shielding charms are some of the most commonly used."

She scowled at him, unable to contain herself.

"You're just as much of a know-it-all as your mother was." She hadn't hated Hermione, she really hadn't…not until she had slept with her boyfriend.

Justin glared at her and she froze. It was the glare of a man who had been dead for over a decade. It was not Harry's glare.

"Class dismissed," she heard herself say as if listening from another room.

x

x

There was a knock at Harry's door. It was almost midnight, too late for visitors. He opened it to reveal a witch he had not seen in many years. He stared at her, but said nothing."

"You're not his father."

"It took you eleven years to figure that out?"

"It took him eleven years to glare at me."

Harry couldn't suppress the soft chuckle.

"So you've guessed who the father is."

"It's hard to believe, but with that look…it's impossible not to."

He opened the door wider so that she could step inside.

"I'm sorry I left you. I just thought…"

"I know how it looked."

"Still, I should have believed you."

They stood there in the dark foyer.

"I'm still in love with you," she whispered, tears filling her eyes, "I tried to get over you, but…" She didn't get a chance to finish her sentence as he stepped forward, took her in his arms and kissed her deeply. She had missed him every day since she had left.

"I'm still in love with you too," he whispered against the skin of her neck, sending shivers down her spine. He pressed her up against the back of the closed door as his hands traced the hem of her skirt. He had missed her too. She didn't return to Hogwarts until the next morning.

x

x

Harry waited in the the Headmistress' office. She was late for their appointment. One of the portraits was staring at him uncomfortably. He avoided it for a few minutes, but then turned to meet its gaze.

"Justin told me he spoke with you."

"He did."

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two men. Their relationship had been changed. While they had once been bound only by mutual hatred, they now were bound by something else.

"You…did a good job. He is an incredible young man," the portrait started awkwardly.

"I know."

There was another silence.

"You're a better father than I ever could have been."

"That's because I'm a better man," Harry said coldly.

"I won't argue with that."

Another silence. Harry stared out the window found himself desperately wishing that McGonagall would return quickly.

"I didn't force her."

"What?" Harry asked, turning back towards the portrait.

"Miss Granger…Hermione…I didn't force her. I know what it probably looks like to you, but it was mutual, consensual. I cared for her."

"I know," Harry replied, sighing, "I didn't understand at first, how she could have slept with you. But as Justin got older, there were things he would do….things he would say…. I didn't realize how perfect of a match the two of you were until I saw you and her in him. I didn't realize how alike the two of you were until I saw traits that he could have gotten from either one of you."

"She was amazing," Snape said and even in the portrait, Harry could see the pain in his eyes.

"Did you know, before you spoke with him, that you had a son?"

"Hermione came and spoke to this portrait before she went to your house that night. She wanted to tell me that I had a son, that she was dying and that she would not let the child fall into Dumbledore's manipulative hands."

Harry said nothing and Snape continued.

"I told her there was no wizard both foolish enough to stand up to Dumbledore and powerful enough to get away with it."

"And what did she say to that?"

"She told me there was _one_."

x

x

_A/N: I have a story about Snape raising Harry's son, so I wanted to do a quick little one about Harry raising Snape's son._


End file.
